Andrei POPESCU, Saturday, May 31, 2014 10:35 PM:Probably simplest is to switch to root an copy the files to the stick.How do I switch to root? During installation of Debian, I expressly clicked "No" to "Allow login as root" option.
sudo -i
Also if the stick is FAT32 you will loose all information about permissions, so if you ever copy them back you have to adjust thoseby hand accordingly.Please show me how to adjust "those permissions" back to their original forms.
Assumed there's no data on the stick, IOW assumed you plan to copy to a stick, then don't copy the directories and files directly, but write the directories and files to a tar archive, so all the permissions are preserved and you're free to compress the archive.
cd /path/to/dir/you/want/to/copy/tar --exclude=file_that_should_not_be_copied -czf /pa/th/backup_file.bak.tar.gz * .hidden_file
You should read some howtos about shell globbing, before you write data to an archive. You should read some howtos about how to use tar, e.g. how to restore data from the archive.
Regards, Ralf